FRANCE
Montreal Gazette
AP
September 20, 2005
A Canadian clergyman with a criminal record for sexually abusing minors confessed yesterday to charges of raping a young member of his parish in Normandy, where he moved after serving a prison term in Quebec.
"I take responsibility for what has happened," Denis Vadeboncoeur, a priest in the Evreux diocese, told a court at the opening of his trial.
"Now, I must accept and assume the consequence of my acts."
Vadeboncoeur, 65, faces a 20-year sentence if convicted on charges of having abused his position of authority and raping a boy identified only as having been under 15.
The assaults occurred from February 1990 to August 1993 while Vadeboncoeur was a priest at a church in the Normandy village of Lieurey.
The victim, now 30, came forward in 2000, first informing the bishop of Evreux, Jacques David, who alerted authorities.
Vadeboncoeur moved to France in January 1988 to resume his life as a priest after having served a 20-month sentence in a Canadian prison. He had pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual abuse and one of sodomy against four teenage boys there.